Military Theory and Information Warfare

RYAN HENRY and C. EDWARD PEARTREE

"To conquer the command of the air means victory; to be beaten
in the air means defeat and acceptance of whatever terms the enemy may
be pleased to impose." -- Giulio Douhet[1]

The effect of technology on warfare often has colored
the predictions of theorists, elevating to eternal truths what we discover
in retrospect to have been passing historical epochs. Free of the context
of the 1920s, Douhet seems dazzled by the revolutionary possibilities of
air power. He cannot be criticized for not anticipating anti-aircraft radar
and surface-to-air missiles, nor were he and his contemporaries alert to
the continued success of low-tech, ground-based asymmetric strategies of
determined, resilient adversaries. But one word--Vietnam--provides a corrective
to his assertions. Air power has had a tremendous effect on warfare, but
it simply has not lived up to Douhet's prediction that it would be the
decisive factor in all future conflicts.

Current interest in information warfare and the manifold effects of
the information revolution on the conduct of war cause many to proclaim
a revolution in warfare. Evangelists of information warfare, like forerunner
evangelists of air power, sea power, and artillery, risk losing sight of
historical context and the continuities of conflict. We are once again
faced with a genuine technological revolution which seems to offer an entirely
new mode of warfare, one that advocates insist will supplant existing modes.
Thus military theorists and defense planners are once again challenged
to use new technologies for the competitive advantages they may offer on
the battlefield, while bearing in mind their limitations.

This article reviews the effects of information technologies on military
theory, tempered by insights into the consequences of previous technological
revolutions. Issues emerge that are independent of any technology or international
security environment. They include an appraisal of the ability of contemporary
analysts and theorists to challenge promises of unprecedented change, and
an examination of the theoretical implications of the so-called "revolution
in military affairs." Related issues include the need to avoid being
dazzled by the new technologies (while not exaggerating their significance)
and at the same time appreciating the extraordinary near-term advantages
and capabilities they afford. Finally there is the matter of balance. We
must use the technologies to advantage, neither misapplying them in haste
nor hesitating until we miss the opportunities they represent.

Technology, Society, and War

The enormous popularity of The Third Wave and War and Anti-War
has given currency to the notion that historical epochs--and the wars that
go with them--are characterized by revolutionary technological breakthroughs
that cause "waves" of socioeconomic change.[2] According to the
authors of those texts, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the first (agrarian) wave
was characterized by animal domestication and agricultural cultivation;
the second (industrial) wave by mechanization, mass production, and the
division of labor; and the emerging third (information) wave by digitization,
computers, and information technologies.

While the Tofflers' thesis is less than perfect,[3] they are generally
correct with respect to the goals of warfare imposed by the prevailing
socioeconomic frameworks of the various epochs. Successful pre-industrial
war was generally predicated on the seizure of territorial assets, control
of them, or both. Successful industrial age war was about reducing the
means of production and out-manufacturing one's opponent--dubbed schlachtmaterial
by the Germans during World War I. If the analogy holds, the advance
guard of Pentagon theorists and defense analysts contends, future wars
will be waged for control of data, information, and knowledge assets.

Weapons of war also reflect the dominant aspects of each era's socioeconomic
paradigm. Rifled arms, iron-clad ships, machine guns, tanks, and aircraft
depict the evolution of industrial age war. The precision-guided munition,
popularly known as the "smart bomb," heralds for some the weaponry
of the information age. The deeper expression of any age, however, can
generally be found in the organization and culture of the warfighting community.
Some propose that hierarchical command structures and ponderous military-industrial
bureaucracies, created to fit industrial age needs, must now give way to
the decentralized, "flattened" business network of the information
age. The success of businesses that have adapted to the new world of networked
computing, communications, and data processing--and the failure of those
that have not--seem to the Pentagon's reform-minded Young Turks to be compelling
arguments in favor of introducing commercial processes and procedures into
the military.

But there are liabilities associated with moving too rapidly to reengineer
the force around new technologies without first considering interests and
risks. A view that is too techno-centric risks revisiting such flawed experiments
as the Army's Pentomic division of the 1950s, the 280mm atomic cannon,
the flying jeep, and the jet-pack-powered infantryman. The appearance of
new weapons and new technologies has sometimes caused military leaders
and theorists to make errors in judgment, misreading the meaning of the
new technology and producing poor returns on the investment, whether on
the battlefield or in the view of history.[4]

Technology and Military Theory

Some attribute current interest in Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategist and
philosopher of war, to the advent of the information age and its military
subset, "information war." This may seem curious, for Sun Tzu
lived some 2500 years before the invention of the computer, the fiber-optic
cable, or the orbital satellite. What appeals to many current military
writers is Sun Tzu's simple, aphoristic approach to warfare based on the
principles of superior intelligence, deception, and knowledge of the mind
of one's enemy. Current theorists therefore conclude that the new mode
of warfare ushered in by the information revolution will have sweeping
effects on the conduct of war in the near future. Precision weapons will
be directed at the enemy's decisive point(s) at the critical moment through
"information superiority." Superiority, in turn, will occur through
space, near-space, and ground-based sensing technologies that will transmit
attack instructions in real time via a "system of systems" that
links all parts of the battlespace. Some even predict that the new technologies
will penetrate, if not lift, the fog of war.

The more radical of the theorists predict that information warfare will
not only provide dominant awareness of the battlespace; it will also allow
us to manipulate, exploit, or disable enemy information systems electronically.
The intent here evidently is to knock an enemy senseless--literally--and
leave him at the mercy not only of conventional kinetic attack, but of
psychological operations aimed at controlling his perceptions and decisionmaking
abilities. Public opinion is to be shaped, leaders will be cut off from
citizens, and the mind of the enemy will be directly penetrated and his
strategy defeated. In the ideal case all this will occur bloodlessly, fulfilling
Sun Tzu's goal of victory without battle. At least that's the theory.

Unlike Sun Tzu, whose timelessness owes much to his lack of tactical
or technical advice, most military theorists of the past 500 years have
based their work on either specific technologies or scientific assumptions
peculiar to the prevailing thinking of their age. This may seem axiomatic,
but it is worth considering--given the fact that many of them sought enduring
wisdom in their work. Machiavelli, whose insights into military character
and the importance of political motives in war prefigures the thinking
of Clausewitz, deemphasized the technical aspects of warfare. His exception,
however, seems to prove the rule. The theorists that followed him--continuing
to this day--demonstrate a predilection for technical fixes.

• The renaissance and the emergence of the scientific
revolutions of the 16th and 17th centuries stimulated a fascination with
the machine which extended beyond the realm of science and technology proper
into the culture and, inevitably, into the making of war. Engineers and
mathematicians, among them Galileo and Niccolo Tartaglia, attempted to
develop ballistic equations that would refine the blunt and unpredictable
force of artillery. Advocates of artillery, which had become progressively
more effective starting in the 15th century, believed that it would dominate
all wars in the future, sweeping away the age of cavalry and diminishing
the importance of the foot soldier.

• The preeminent military theorist of the 17th
century was an engineer, Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, the master of
siegecraft and fortification. Vauban produced no theoretical writings on
the nature of war or the integration of new technical innovations into
strategy. A technologist, he was concerned only with the creation of plans
and formulae for the successful attack of enemy fortresses and the protection
of one's own. The study of war in this age of science and reason had become
detached from theoretical underpinnings. It used a purely quantitative
means of analysis to focus on tools and methods of applying them.

• The tradition of "scientific" war reached
its theoretical apogee during the Industrial Revolution in the writing
of Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini. Jomini, who served as Chief of Staff
to Marshall Ney, analyzed Napoleon's campaigns in a search for the unchanging
principles and practices of war. He believed that quasi-mathematical concepts
dictated the proper organization of military formations, and the direction
and size of attack at the "decisive point." War was, for Jomini,
reducible to propositions that were universally true and universally applicable
across the spectrum of military conflict, much as any natural compound
could be smelted into its elemental nature and thus understood. And despite
his embrace of scientific principles, Jomini's decline as an enduring military
thinker was due in large measure to his neglect of specific technological
innovations. Rifled arms, high-explosive shells, machine guns, and later
mobile armor and air power rendered his supposedly immutable rules about
"interior lines" and the geometry of the battlefield highly dubious.

• Carl von Clausewitz, Jomini's 19th-century rival,
has held up well by comparison. He, like Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, focused
less on military technology or contemporary intellectual fads (like Jomini's
Newtonianism), and more on war as an eternal human phenomenon, not rational
but capricious, not reducible but complex . . . in short, a human activity.[5]
He rejected quantitative analysis and scientific formulae in favor of philosophical
insights. Clausewitz's concept of "friction" as inherent in war,
his belief that in every battle and in every war there is a "culminating
point," and his insistence upon recognizing the passionate, violent
nature of conflict are not bound to any age. Unlike most of the technical
theorists, Clausewitz was mainly concerned with the ultimate goals of conflict.
Thus his insistence on the political nature of war and the oft-quoted aphorism
that war is "an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will."[6]

• Alfred Thayer Mahan, the prophet of sea power
in the late 19th century, was concerned with grand strategy, specifically
that of the United States in its development as a world power. Mahan's
views on the importance of geography, trading economies, and styles of
government are clouded by his obsessive promotion of sea power to the neglect
of land power. The new technology of the steam gunship and a selective
reading of military history convinced him of the absolute primacy of sea
power in ensuring the commercial and military success of nations, and caused
him to dismiss the importance of railways and the growing significance
of motor transport on land.[7] Nor did he pay much attention to the development
of torpedoes and submarines, which promised to make armored capital ships
vulnerable to attack.[8] Like his strategic inspiration, Jomini, he continued
to insist on permanent scientific principles of naval strategy which would
remain unchanged regardless of technical alterations to the equation.

Some may recall that even Clausewitz wrote extensively of tactics and
operations. Who has studied his chapters on "Attack of Convoys"
or "Defense of Swamps"? These sections of On War are seldom
read and justifiably so; wed to their particular time and place, they are
now of mere historical interest and largely irrelevant to the making of
modern war. So we tend to overlook his neglect of sea power, as egregious
in a sense as is Mahan's ignoring land power, because of Clausewitz's transcendent
insights. Mahan, captured by a long-gone technological moment and the zeitgeist
of a forgotten age, does not appeal today because he lacks Clausewitz's
reach and depth.

• Air Marshal Giulio Douhet was the last great
military techno-prophet before the advent of nuclear weapons (which produced
their own generation of influential strategic thinkers) and before the
current crop of information warfare theorists. Even before World War I,
Douhet saw the potential of aviation as a transformational technology in
war. His mature writings, from the 1920s, predicted the emergence of air
power as the dominant realm of war and the aerial bomber as the predominant
tool:

The brutal but inescapable conclusion that we must draw is this: in
the face of the technical development of aviation today, in case of war
the strongest army we can deploy in the Alps and strongest navy we can
dispose on our seas will prove no effective defense against the determined
efforts of the enemy to bomb our cities.[9]

Douhet anticipated rapid strikes by aerial bombers that would devastate
defenseless cities, causing terrified societies and demoralized national
governments to capitulate before any counterattack could be mounted. Defenses
against air power were bound to fail; they were a waste of resources, he
said, based on what he had seen during World War I. Armies and navies,
ponderous and surface bound, were virtually useless because wars were likely
to be won or lost in the air before fleets could be put to sea or armies
mobilized. He tells us unequivocally:

If I may be so bold, I have mathematical certainty that the future will
confirm my assertion that aerial warfare will be the most important element
in future wars, and that in consequence not only will the importance of
the Independent Air Force rapidly increase, but the importance of the army
and navy will decrease in proportion.[10]

Mathematical certainty?

Information Warfare: Prelude to Revolution

The revolution in information technology, from the transistor through
widespread digitization toward global socioeconomic revolution via deeply
networked communications, has profoundly influenced analysts and planners
in and out of uniform. It has also produced a cottage industry in information
warfare concepts, studies, and proposals as the military attempts to understand,
derive principles and theories for, and apply the new technologies. The
frequently confusing nature of these products stems from three principle
sources: the rapidity of technological change; the very nature of information
and information technology, which blurs distinctions between civil and
military use and targets; and uncertainty about the nature of information
warfare itself.[11] As with the air power revolution, new and apparently
revolutionary information technologies promise an immense effect on the
conduct of war. And as with air power, theorists are emerging to wrestle
with the nature of information age war, seeking clues as to how it might
change the shape of conflict in general.

The Persian Gulf War afforded the average American his first (albeit
filtered) glimpse of the future of warfare. Millions were treated to precision-guided
bombs annihilating targets in downtown Baghdad, learned of satellite uplinks
from the battlefield that provided real-time connectivity, and applauded
the ability of stealth aircraft to ensure aerial dominance. These outcomes
were enabled by battlefield tracking and targeting systems that allowed
American forces to identify and attack targets well beyond the line of
sight, by advanced aerial reconnaissance from airborne warning and control
systems (AWACS) and from joint surveillance and target attack radar systems
(JSTARS), and by space-based satellite sensors. The latter provided highly
accurate battlefield information to combatants, tightening decision cycles
and dramatically accelerating the tempo of combat. Everyone seemed to understand
that something was different about this "videogame war"; there
was much more to the spectacle than the immediacy of Vietnam's television
war 20 years earlier.

Since Desert Storm there have been orders-of-magnitude improvements
in technological capabilities. For example, the system used by Gulf War
commanders to transmit messages could move 2400 bits of information per
second. The current commercially developed and operated Global Broadcast
System transmits 23 million bits per second into Bosnia. A message that
took more than an hour to send in 1991 can now be sent in less than a second.[12]
The challenge for the US military and for political leaders has been to
keep up with the pace of change in information technologies generated by
innovations in the commercial, not defense, market and driven by consumer,
not warfighter, demand. The convergence of digitized information, computers,
networks, cellular communications, satellites, precision munitions, and
data fusion technologies has translated into quantifiable improvements
in volumes of data exchanged, experimental concepts, and testbed programs.

The idea of an information-based military technical revolution is reflected
in increased understanding of what is happening on the battlefield and
improved ability to apply destructive force when and where we want to.
These capabilities are built upon specific technologies, such as improvements
in sensors carried on advanced AWACS and JSTARS, unoccupied aerial vehicles,
or electro-optical satellites with one-foot image resolution and wide-area
coverage. Others include intelligent fusion of data products by combining
artificial intelligence with "knowledge bases" to process, manipulate,
and tailor information for specific user needs; "sensor to shooter"
couplings (automatic target recognition capabilities are not far off);
and integrated, high-speed, high-capacity battlefield communications capabilities
via the aforementioned Global Broadcast System (GBS) and the Global Command
and Control System (GCCS), both of which are designed to provide the right
information to the right user at the right time and place.

Mastery of information and information processes leads naturally to
increases in precision and lethality. The quest for battlespace omniscience
can improve tracking and targeting capabilities, aggravating the adversary's
problem of finding sanctuary. What can be seen, in the parlance of military
analysts, can be hit; with these new information technologies, nearly everything
that is not hidden can be seen and is therefore vulnerable. The current
revolution in information technologies promises military leaders an extraordinary
extension of previous battlespace awareness, information dissemination
capabilities, and ubiquitous "smart" weapons. Together they offer
the ability to know what is happening, what is important, where the points
of maximum leverage are, and connection to the means to apply force at
those points, all on a vastly compressed time scale.

To appreciate the magnitude of these changes, recall that as recently
as the 1970s reconnaissance was conducted by manned aircraft or ground
patrols. Both called in data that were plotted on maps for analysis by
intelligence experts. Hours at best, more likely days or weeks, could elapse
before critical information was sufficiently processed to be forwarded
to planes in the air or soldiers in the field. In Panama in 1989 things
had still not changed substantially. Today, digital 3-D map representations
could provide a complete picture of the battlespace to every friendly combatant,
updated as events occur. Satellite imagery, or live video from an unoccupied
aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a digital camera, is potentially available
in real-time to a soldier in the field via a ruggedized laptop computer
and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver. The soldier and his comrades
could then synchronize their actions with the flow of battle, unaided by
the traditional hierarchical and bureaucratic command and control system.

Automatic target recognition systems currently in prototype may eventually
remove most of the middlemen in such an environment, directing long-range
precision strikes as soon as information is received from the sensor. All
this is perceived to occur without human intervention. If these concepts
mature, decision cycles for commanders and soldiers would be both compressed
and enriched, accelerating the tempo of warfighting, demanding more initiative-based,
decentralized decisionmaking, reducing personnel in the field and on the
staff, and eliminating much of the noise, error, and viscosity normally
inserted by human links. These communications and intelligence-gathering
advantages also would be available during any non-combat operation in which
our 21st-century forces might participate: humanitarian, peace enforcement,
or support of domestic authorities.

Given the seemingly decisive comparative advantage which information
technologies offer the possessor, the intrinsic value of data and information
would seem to be on the rise. The Gulf War suggested how new awareness
and faster targeting capabilities relative to adversary capabilities could
translate into a smashingly decisive victory in the field. Therefore, the
new technologies--highly sophisticated and integrated, vulnerable to both
kinetic and electronic disruption--will themselves become objects of war.
Hence the enthusiasm for information warfare.

While intelligence and operations security have always been important
in wartime, and lines of communications have always been targets, current
thinking establishes the preeminence of "information superiority."
According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff publication Joint Vision 2010:
"We must have information superiority: the capability to collect,
process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting
or denying an adversary's ability to do the same."[13] So by announcing
that the sine qua non for success in future conflicts is "information
superiority," we have defined new vulnerabilities and targets for
the attack and for the defense.

Battlefield employment, exploitation, and targeting, and protection
of the means of gaining and maintaining superiority, presently define the
conventional range of the information warfare spectrum. The various Pentagon
permutations--command and control warfare (C2W); command, control, communications
and intelligence (C3I); command, control, communications, computers, intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR)--describe the realm of traditional
warfare. They are reflected in the addition of new information technologies
to units trained for traditional force-on-force combat. The popular image
is that of a soldier with a wearable computer and a GPS terminal, calling
in long-range precision strikes. But beyond this image, and to many the
more revolutionary and important aspect of information warfare, are the
vulnerabilities of national and military infrastructures that rely on a
host of modern automation and information technologies.

The information revolution is driven by the changes that information
technologies are creating as they are integrated into the cultural, economic,
and civic life of society. Essential national infrastructures such as telecommunications,
transportation, electrical power, emergency services, and food, water,
and fuel distribution are dependent on digital, software-based systems
that are controlled through networked, publicly accessible communications
interfaces. International commercial and financial transactions are increasingly
dependent on electronic networks. It has been estimated that 62 million
Americans now use the Internet to communicate, bank, shop, and do business.[14]

Public switched networks on which essential public and commercial infrastructures
depend have shown themselves vulnerable to penetration, disruption, and
manipulation. Furthermore, a combination of cost concerns and the superiority
of established commercial systems has created a situation in which an estimated
95 percent of all military communications travel over commercial systems.
With the recent completion of an accord on telecommunications deregulation,
these networks become subject to foreign ownership and control. In these
changes lie the concerns that America, the most sophisticated, highly networked
information age economy and society, has become vulnerable to an "electronic
Pearl Harbor."

From Technology to Theory and Doctrine: Competing Concepts of Information
Warfare

Definitions of information warfare are abundant and protean. The most
recent Department of Defense definition describes information warfare (IW)
as "information operations (IO) conducted during time of crisis or
conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary
or adversaries."[15] According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

IW can be waged in wartime within and beyond the traditional military
battlefield. As a subset of IW, command and control warfare (C2W) is an
application of IW in military operations that specifically attacks and
defends the C2 target set. However, the capabilities and disciplines employed
in C2W (psychological operations [PSYOP], deception, operations security,
and electronic warfare) as well as other less traditional ones focused
on information systems can be employed to achieve IW objectives that are
outside the C2 target set.[16]

This attempt to define the information-based revolution for national
security policymakers and warfighters is multilayered, a bit confusing,
and apparently deliberately vague. Agreeing that IW is a field with the
potential for great effect, perhaps the linchpin of a revolution in military
affairs, questions still abound about how it will affect military culture
and future conflicts. While issues of integration remain problematic, the
spectrum of possibilities may be laid out as follows. At the most incremental
level of change, there are those who would overlay new and near-future
technologies on current military systems. Such an effort can be seen in
the "digital battlefield" of the US Army's "Force XXI,"
and the robust, highly detailed Department of Defense "Advanced Battlespace
Information System."[17] These programs perceive information technology
as a powerful force multiplier for kinetic warfare that would not in itself
be substantially changed from the heyday of industrial age war.

Others have suggested that the nascent information-based revolution
in military affairs will eventually make possible radical reform of military
organizations and tactical doctrines while still operating within the traditional
parameters of warfare--dominating an adversary on a physical battlefield.
Such approaches can be found in the "Army After Next" project,
the Marine Corps' "Sea Dragon" concept, the Navy's "Forward
. . . from the Sea," and the Air Force's "New World Vistas."
The concept was developed most fully in 1996 through the Defense Science
Board's "Summer Study on Tactics and Technology for 21st Century Military
Superiority." The report envisioned restructuring US ground forces
into small "distributed combat cells" rather than hefty battalions
and divisions, their warfighting power multiplied by sensors, robotic systems,
precision logistics, and the ability to call in long-range precision firepower
from land, sea, or air. All of these changes were of course predicated
on a robust information infrastructure.[18]

Finally, where science fiction meets science fact, there is the emerging
concept of "cyberwar": conflict in the purely digital realm consisting
of remote attacks on critical information nodes, links, and databases to
disrupt, exploit, disable, or deny service. Information warfare of this
sort would also include deception and psychological operations at a much
higher level of subtlety and effectiveness than expected in conventional
operations, given the manipulability of digital information. Combinations
of all of the foregoing concepts appear in multiple-fence-straddling positions
such as the one established above by the Joint Staff.

Theories of Information Warfare

So what do the theorists expect in a future adapted to the emerging
information age? The answer presently seems to be faith in the future of
information technologies to produce revolutionary changes in military affairs
and the conduct of war.

• John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, two of the
first and best, have produced a number of intellectually rich articles,
most of them examining the twin concepts of "cyberwar" and "netwar."[19]
In their view, cyberwar refers to an information-enriched style of future
military conflict in which the struggle for information dominance holds
the key to victory. Netwar, the more heady form of future conflict, refers
to inter-societal contests of perceptions and national messages. Arquilla
and Ronfeldt are well known for their comparison of information warfare
to the "decapitation" techniques employed during the 13th century
by the Mongols, who used superior speed and lines of communication to control
numerically superior enemies located over a wide area. In this context,
cyberwar would allow a network of decentralized information warriors to
achieve decisive, bloodless victory--a sort of post-industrial blitzkrieg--by
directly targeting an adversary's information "nerve centers."
Netwar in theory could prevent real wars (or cyberwars) by allowing for
deterrent posturing and for control over potential adversaries' perceptions.

• Another group of theorists--George Stein, Richard
Szafranski, and Owen Jensen--are associated with the Air University at
Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Much of their theoretical work has appeared
in Airpower Journal, a hotbed of discussion of information warfare.
In general this group maintains that the highest potential of information
warfare is as a new realm of conflict in which information (or knowledge)
itself is both the center of gravity and the principal weapon. This type
of futuristic conflict would occur in a transformed environment; weapon
platforms as we now know them would be outmoded. No digitized battlefield,
no info-tech applique on existing systems, but something fundamentally
different.

To paraphrase their ideas, information warfare would assume an autonomous
role in "information campaigns" far beyond its application as
a force multiplier in more linear military evolutions. Emerging information
technologies might allow us to battle the mind of the enemy via customized
propaganda, morphing reality into a fictive universe which we serve up
through diversified information networks. These theorists suggest that
information warfare, not unlike Arquilla and Ronfeldt's concept of netwar,
would be a high-tech, more sophisticated form of psychological operations
and propaganda, directed at mass or niche audiences. They conclude that
technology will be used to control an opponent through strategic information
dominance: tailoring his information content to suit our interests, conditioning
his knowledge and understanding of the situation, ideally without his awareness.[20]
As defined by the Maxwell school, information warfare seems to be the functional
equivalent of conventional concepts of strategic air power.[21]

• Martin Libicki, a standard-setter on the subject
of information warfare who has worked harder than most to bridge the gap
between ideas and action, has suggested that information may ultimately
prove to be a universal deterrent to war because of the global transparency
that it will foster. He suggests that a network of satellites, and of air,
ground, and sea-based sensors, will ring the earth, affording a God's eye
view of the world and all its activities. A global information infrastructure
will link users of this information, ensuring a sort of universal awareness
of military and other activity. Under such conditions, any border incursions
or sudden mobilization would be sensed and could be thwarted immediately,
ostensibly by exposing and threatening the would-be aggressor. Were the
aggressor to persist, the international community would only have to dam
up the aggressor's bitstreams and the information flows essential to his
war effort, economy, and national infrastructures. Such procedures would
(ideally) curb his ambitions without firing a shot.[22]

These authors are exploring new ways of thinking about war and warfare
in an era of change. They are to be commended for attempting to expand
the intellectual horizons of often parochial, hide-bound military and civilian
bureaucracies. The assumptions of many of these theorists, however, are
highly dependent on the technological innovations of the moment. Even emphasizing
as some do, recalling Sun Tzu, that the real object of information warfare
is the human mind, the visions they present are unattainable without the
array of new and emerging technologies assumed to be part of a fully netted
information age world.

Our ability to combat or deter adversaries using cyberspace tools is
predicated on their being as reliant on information technologies as we
are. Threatening to cut off a hostile neighbor's bitstreams will be credible
only if two conditions are met. The first is that he is largely dependent
upon them for survival; the second is that we have the ability to turn
them off. Little of value will be accomplished by niche-casting propaganda
at a nation that lacks satellite television or an Internet connection.
As recently as 1997, it has been suggested, half the world's population
had never even made a telephone call. Similarly, strategic psychological
operations, no matter how overwhelming and sophisticated technologically,
are likely to be far more effective in a democracy than in the authoritarian
states that currently present many of our most significant security threats:
Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. In fact, it is interesting that such
a strategy would appeal to an American theorist because it is our highly
democratic, media-saturated, and technologically sophisticated society
that is most vulnerable to a counterattack.

Some information warfare theorists have attempted to shield themselves
from accusations of technological determinism by suggesting that we need
not follow slavishly the technology wave. Rather, we should use our imaginations
to determine what we want it do for us and then develop the technology
to fit those needs. This ignores the fact that technology development,
much like the formulation of strategy and tactics, is a coevolutionary
process. New technologies emerge to either exploit or compensate for weaknesses
in existing technologies. Inventing a theory of information warfare risks
falling victim to the kinds of fallacies that Douhet encountered. Unable
to see the future, he imagined one based on linear projections of extant
technologies. Unable or unwilling to imagine counter-air defenses, or the
limitations of strategic bombing in the face of a determined foe, he saw
only a pristine view of air power, conducting operations with impunity
against helpless, terror-stricken citizens.

Technology and the Current Revolution in Military Affairs

Technology-driven changes in military affairs are transient, sometimes
eclipsed in less than a generation, and the competitive advantages that
they offer are increasingly fleeting. Andrew Krepinevich, one of the leading
thinkers in this area, has identified ten technology "revolutions"
from the advent of infantry warfare to the birth of nuclear weapons.[23]
Steven Metz and James Kievit of the US Army War College have divided military
"revolutions" into major and minor forms. The first are mostly
technology driven and malleable; the others ride on broader socioeconomic
"waves."[24] It is clear that specific technologies have sometimes
had significant effects on the conduct of warfare; gunpowder, internal
combustion engines, breech-loading mechanisms, radio, and radar are among
the most memorable. But war remains essentially what it has been for centuries:
Clausewitz's "act of force to compel our enemy to do our will."

In a century that began with active cavalry regiments and ends with
nuclear arms, stealth aircraft, and theories of information warfare, progress
has been continuous and evolutionary. In Machiavelli's time, improvements
in artillery led enthusiasts to predict that it would supplant all other
tools of war. Five hundred years later, artillery is still improving, and
it still plays a subordinate role in combat operations. So perhaps it is
too much to expect truly revolutionary new technologies to lead to fundamental
changes in the forms and functions of conflict.

The German blitzkrieg is sometimes offered as a compelling example of
creative minds deriving a competitive edge over adversaries by astute application
of technology to the problems of land warfare. The Germans combined armor,
radio communications, and tactical air support to remarkable effect in
Poland, the low countries, and France during 1939-40. But once others had
an opportunity to analyze their techniques and methods, the edge was lost.
As the Germans later drove into Soviet territory, their logistics train
was stretched beyond endurance and the army, in effect, became "de-modernized."
The blitzkrieg--material intensive and dependent on frequent resupply to
maintain communications, mobility, and combined arms capabilities--fell
apart, and the war in the east degenerated into a slow, brutal contest
of attrition.[25] The benefits of technological edges can be fleeting indeed.

The 1997 "Army After Next" winter wargame, which featured
a face-off between the United States and a peer competitor, began with
two surprises: a laser attack on US space-based satellite reconnaissance,
GPS, and communications capabilities, followed closely by a nuclear electro-magnetic
pulse burst in space. The combined effects of these unexpected initiatives
reduced by 50 percent the military information infrastructure on which
most of our new weapon systems are dependent.

Predictions about the effects of technology are almost always erroneous,
even when the technology involved justifies the designation "revolutionary."
The airplane, an unprecedented technological breakthrough which added a
new dimension to the battlespace, repeatedly has been shown to be insufficient
in and of itself to transform war. Contrary to Douhet's assertions, command
of the air has certainly not made armies and navies obsolete. And as Michael
Howard has pointed out, when the Allies bombed the cities of Germany toward
the end of World War II and the conduct of strategic air war most closely
approached Douhet's vision, it not only failed to force the enemy to capitulate,
but actually hardened resistance.[26]

Clausewitz reminds us that the human elements of war are extraordinarily
difficult to gauge. If necessity is the mother of invention, asymmetric
tactics, strategy, or technological countermeasures will always upset the
best laid technology-based plans. Nuclear weapons were supposed to make
conventional arms obsolete and totally revolutionize warfare. Massive retaliation,
the Eisenhower-era strategy for their deployment, ignored conventional
capabilities only to find that the will to use weapons of mass destruction
was lacking. Dirty little wars on the periphery continued and guerrillas
flourished, despite our fearsome nuclear arsenal and the threat of certain
annihilation we wielded. Our bluff was called in Korea and later in Vietnam,
and the nukes remained holstered. Soldiers at the dusk of the industrial
age faced the same mud and mayhem that had confronted their counterparts
during the Napoleonic wars at its dawn.

Technological advantages in war have generally proven ephemeral; neither
can a technology-driven theory of war or strategy for war hold sway for
very long. Nor do old weapons necessarily go out of style--new tools are
just added to the box. Technology-driven revolutions in military affairs
entail the reorganization of forces and doctrine around those new technologies.
Anyone who believes that the nature and rate of change qualify for designation
as "revolutionary" should read their mandate carefully and proceed
cautiously. It is important to grasp the functional significance of technological
innovations; it is equally important that risks and vulnerabilities--the
stuff of strategy--remain foremost in assessing their political and military
implications. The most durable military theory focuses less on the latest
technology and more on the infinite complexity of the user.

2. Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam Books, 1991);
Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the
21st Century (New York: Warner Books, 1995).

3. Where, for example, do the Tofflers place the trading states of late
medieval Europe and the Renaissance that flourished long before the Industrial
Revolution, yet whose wealth and power had nothing to do with agriculture
or territorial assets?

4. For an excellent overview of a failed, technology driven RMA of an
earlier era, see A. J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between
Korea and Vietnam (Washington: National Defense Univ. Press, 1986).

5. An intriguing and thoughtful application of current "complexity
theory" thinking to Clausewitz can be found in Alan Beyerchen, "Clausewitz,
Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War," International Security,
17 (Winter 1992-1993), 59-90.

11. There are a profusion of definitions scattered across popular literature
and documents of military doctrine. For the evolution of the Department
of Defense definition of information warfare, see William H. J. Manthorpe,
"From the Editor," Defense Intelligence Journal, 5 (Spring
1996), 8-9; for an excellent tour of the various modalities of information
warfare, see Martin C. Libicki, What is Information Warfare? (Washington:
National Defense Univ. Press, 1995).

17. Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Office of the Secretary
of Defense, Final Report of the Advanced Battlespace Information System
(ABIS) Task Force, vol. I-VI (Washington: Department of Defense, May 1996).

18. Department of Defense, Defense Science Board, "Summer Study
Task for on Tactics and Technology for 21st Century Military Superiority,
Final Report" (Washington: Department of Defense, 1996).

19. See John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, "Cyberwar is Coming!"
Comparative Strategy, 12 (April-June 1993), 141-65; and Arquilla
and Ronfeldt, "Information, Power and Grand Strategy: In Athena's
Camp," in The Information Revolution and National Security,
ed. Stuart J. D. Schwartzstein (Washington: Center for Strategic and International
Studies, 1996).

Captain Ryan Henry (USN, Ret.) is Vice President for advanced planning
and strategy with Science Applications International Corporation and was
formerly a senior fellow in the Political-Military Studies program at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His career has included
experience as a combat commander (including 83 combat flights during Desert
Storm), defense analyst, experimental test pilot, Senate staffer, and researcher.
A graduate of the US Naval Academy, he has master's degrees in aeronautical
systems, systems management, national security resourcing, and public administration,
and he is completing his Ph.D. dissertation in public policy.

C. Edward Peartree is with the Office of Strategic Policy and Negotiations,
Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, US Department of State. He was formerly
a research associate in the Political-Military Studies program at CSIS,
where he worked on a multiyear study of information warfare and the effects
of the information revolution on national and international security, and
he is a contributing author to Air and Space Power in the New Millennium
(CSIS Press, 1997). He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and holds
an M.A. from George Washington University's Elliott School of International
Affairs. As with all Parameters articles, the views expressed here
are the authors' and not necessarily those of the Department of State or
any other agency of the US government.

A version of this article appeared in The Information Revolution
and International Security (CSIS Press, 1998), edited by Ryan Henry
and C. Edward Peartree.